September 9, 2010

They all seem to be college towns. But where's Madison? I went through the list looking for Madison, and on seeing each new place, I thought: It's kind of like Madison, but Madison's better. Then, thinking for 1 more second, I realized what factor excluded Madison from the list. And it's not cold weather. There are plenty of cold places — including Duluth. It's got to be the taxes.

They all looked nice, especially Athens, Ga and Williamsburg, Va; except for St Petersburg, Fl which is a terrible place trapped on a peninsula across the Bay from the red neck disaster called Tampa, with no life of its own and a hellish summer climate.

Of course they look nice. The pictures are supplied by the respective cities' tourism bureaus, or Chambers of Commerce. (I have to ask Ames IA: really? This is the best picture you could find?) The pictures uniformly seem to be from the middle of Spring. No droughts, no ice storms, do snow, no clouds, no waves of heat, no realism.

I assume this is a Journalist's bias about college towns. They tend to be pricier than other mid sized towns. After 40 years of engineering work why the hell would I want to take more classes? (or for that matter do the whole Elderhostel type stuff of lectures and god awful PC goodie two shoes activities).

This whole retirement moving thing baffles me. If not for lower costs, a more congenial climate, closer to grandkids, or a long deferred ranchette then why move from where you live now.

"They all seem to be college towns." That was a feature, not a bug, in the selection process. the header states: "Your post-work years are a time to improve your golf game, take up a new hobby, or just enjoy a well-deserved break. In these great college towns, you can expand your intellectual horizons too."

The selections are interesting mostly for what the sameness of these "best places to retire" says about the targeted retirees. The 25 towns are all bland-pretty in a predictable, easy way -- everything in cute decorator colors, no less. They're mostly smallish backwaters where everyone you are likely to meet will have a certain sameness (not ethnic so much as mindset); and the attractions are golf (!), tennis (!!), and an occasional college course in basketweaving or whatever to while away the hours (!!!).

Bleh. If that's retirement, I'll keep on working. I don't see any reason to prefer that to Brooklyn.

Myself, I am planning on retiring in some other country, if I can afford to leave by then.

Be careful with this -- my husband's parents moved down to a nice expat retirement town in Mexico and had a fair bit of trouble.

That little bit of money you have stashed away that allows you to live well in a foreign land? Yeah, that makes you a target. They were constantly being robbed and burgled, even with high walls and barbed wire around their house.

And that doesn't even count the number of times they got amoebas (!) and or the time they had to call to regretfully inform us that they may have exposed our newborn to typhoid (!!!) while visiting.

And this was a relatively nice, well-established expat community.

So ... look into it quite a bit before you do it. They were back in the States within a few years.

Of the ones I have spent any time in, I don't know if I would call them college towns. I really didn't know that Prescott had a college until fairly recently - my cousin there went up to Flagstaff for her graduate degree. Tucson is well beyond the U of A now. But the other part of this is that there are colleges everywhere these days, and, at least in Arizona, I don't see a metro area there without some sort of college (if you throw all of Phoenix together, and assign them ASU).

As for heat, Prescott is not that bad for AZ. It is a mile high - 100 feet higher than Denver, and if it weren't for how far south it is, it wouldn't be that hot. It isn't like Phoenix or Las Vegas which are also very low. And, for the terminally hip, it is right across Mingus Mountain from Sonoma (I spent the summer of 1970 doing tower work on that mountain).

Duluth? People here are complaining about Prescott and Tuscon for being too hot. Old people like hot weather. Ever hear of Sun City? It is a suburb of Phoenix, and is therefore at least 10 degrees hotter in the summer than Prescott (which actually gets snow, just not nearly as much as Flagstaff).

Of course, I don't see why anyone in their right mind would want to live in Minn for retirement - yet I have a bunch of friends who live there now and are starting to retire - there.

David...I hear your question. The need to create social events with others maybe the reason people relocate after retirement. The children and grandchildren locale is often preferred.The Elder Hostel concept works really quite well for short trips. If we over 60s folks were to stop using our minds to solve puzzels of life, then our brains wither like any unused muscle. As to climate, the northern Ga to southern Va area has the advantage of mild winters without unbearable summers. Both ice and snow and prolonged heat over 90F stress the older folks hearts and circulatory systems. Remember the story that Life Begins...the day the kids have left home and the dog dies.

I live in southern New Mexico and there are lots of retirees here. Many go back north in the summer but come back in the fall/wmter/early spring. Obviously not everyone can afford to do that but northern Michigan in January?

Even when its hot (not Phoenix hot) here, the mornings and evenings are pleasnat enough but when the high is 35 degrees its cold all the time.

Maybe Madison wasn't picked because the list makers read local newspapers and saw daily accounts of, "Man arrested for 9th DWI." How good of a city can it be if you're more likely to be killed by a drunk driver than virtually anywhere else in the world?

Why in the world would a retired person put education at such a high level of where to retire to? I'm sure some would like to study, but honestly, the percentage that want to go to school must be very small.

I'd echo most of the comments already made, and add that I can't help wonder if one of the criteria was to downgrade the sorts of places that normally appear on these lists. For instance, number one on the list is Durham, but perhaps this was chosen to exclude Chapel Hill, which has been a popular location with retirees since it started advertising in the New Yorker 25 or 30 years ago. The last time I visited that region of North Carolina (which was admittedly more than a few years ago), Chapel Hill was a much nicer town than Durham--and I doubt that has changed. (Of course, that is probably also reflected in higher real estate prices, too.)

With regard to Hanover, I thought the winters there got a little tiresome when I was in my teens and early twenties; although it is a lovely area with much to do, I can't imagine anyone who's not used to the winters there wanting to retire to Hanover--or most of the northern locations mentioned here.

Finally, where Boise is concerned, I've heard people say that Reno and Boise are very similar except that Reno has casinos. Furthermore, Reno is less than an hour from Lake Tahoe, and San Francisco is only four hours away. (Boise's location is much less convenient.) On the other hand, Nevada is one of the states hardest hit by the recession, which is certainly not good, but on the other hand, housing costs are now incredibly low and probably poised to fall further.

This wasn't a bias towards college towns--it's an article expressly about college towns. You know that going in.

I live in one of these places (Beaufort) and have visited a bunch. Seems to me that Madison is reasonably competitive with many on income taxes. It's the real estate taxes in Wisconsin that are killer.

I do wonder how easy it is to take classes at (say) Amherst and Smith, if you live in Northampton. Certainly it would be quite expensive.

The classes at South Carolina-Beaufort are virtually free, especially if you are over 65. Though USCB is not Amherst or Smith, either, in terms of course offerings.

Or Beaufort, where I live. I spent the first two summers in Beaufort. I found the heat really difficult. My age and having lived all my life in the snow belt made it hard to adjust.

So now I get my fortunate butt to Wisconsin for the summer.

(You are wrong about Prescott, which sits at an altitude of 5400 feet. Average August high = 85, average August low = 57. I know Prescott because my son went to Prescott College for one year. It's one of those "interesting" schools.)

Beaufort is a USMC base. It wouldn't exist without the Marine Corps. It is a miserable place, filled with swamp gas and gnats. And if you drive around you can find a voodoo doctor for your ills. Perfect for old folks.

I spent 2 years in Beaufort as a Marine. It's fine for a military base, but a retirement location? You must be joking.

Me, I'm going to retire right here in Puget Sound country. When you already live in the best place in the world, why leave?

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Oh, wait. Did I mention it rains here? A lot? And not your tropical "cloud up and downpour and then leave and it's sunny again" type rain, either. This is on the verge of the temperate coastal rain forest zone, where it's drizzly and gray for months at a time.

You wouldn't want to move here; trust me on this. Try Phoenix or Palm Springs. Or I hear St. Petersburg is really nice...

Why is it that I get called a "dick" for complaining about Ann's "Never Ending Vacation" and "The Free Loadin' Larry Meade" getting free health care from my hard earned tax dollars? (A couple of Dylan references there for you.)

Move to Durham - it's called the City of Medicine because you will receive a sucking chest wound just walking around and Duke can treat you - they have had lots of practice. Even the chief of police was shot at the other day. There was a gun battle downtown the other morning at a local booze house which resulted in 10 casualties. Murder and rape, prostitution and open air drug markets rule in Durham, but at least the police are corrupt and the black mayor has gotten fat an rich by means best left to the imagination.

If you are white and wish to be disenfranchised, treated like a second class citizen, deal with rampant thuggery and mayhem, like living in a war zone, think that the sound of a thug emptying a 20 shot magazine is better than birds chirping, think communists are too right wing, know in your heart that astrology is good science, love Gaia, hate western civilization, admire women who wear burkas, think muslims are swell, don't mind home invasions, like bars on your doors and windows, and otherwise are less intelligent than hdhouse, Durham is the place for you.

Remember, Le-a is pronounced "Le Dash A" because the dash don't be silent.

Austin is hot, hot, butt ugly and requires a car for everything unless you are rich and can afford to live downtown.

Ashland is gorgeous and fun and is being run into the ground by a council of dimwitted, lefty, hippie wannabees, who have to hire a shrink to help them get along with each other. It is becoming a mecca for homeless dopers and brazen black-tailed deer.

I see nothing character building about NYC winters, but other than that I have no big complaints....Sometimes I look at real estate porn. I could sell my apt here and live in real luxury in Florida. Did you know that there are homes in America that have built in washer dryer combos and even spare bedrooms. Opulence beyond all imagining...Well inertia has been the guiding principle of my life, and I'll probably remain here. I wonder about the rationale behind retirement moves. Maybe it's not the wish for a more temperate climate. Perhaps people do not wish to totter in places where they once swaggered.

I was floored to see Lexington, KY on the list. I go there regularly for sports and shopping.

It is not an attractive town. Traffic is horrible. The worst I've ever seen in a town it's size. Not much cultural stuff. It is cool that UK allows 65s and over to sit in on classes. But, I'd take a lot of other unmentioned cities over Lexington any day.

No mention of Hawaii. The foolishness of the idea that the children will come that far to visit you....

Feature.

Tucson is very hot in the summer, but it's fairly cold in the winter (high 30s); it's nice about two months out of the year. At least Phoenix has very nice winters.

I'm baffled by your characterization of college town. To me, a college town is a town that was "made" by the college. Most the places on the list existed already. Colleges were created there BECAUSE of the population, not IN SPITE of it. Prescott and Tucson being rather extreme examples.

Another way to put it; without the college what would happen to the town? Close USC and would Los Angeles notice? Close Cornell and Ithica would wither and die.

Oh and Austin Texas isn't just very hot in the summer, it's unbelievably humid.

And Prescott, AZ has great summers (but I did live several years in Phoenix and Tucson.) One labor day weekend, I drove from Arkansas to Phoenix. The difference was astonishing--no matter how bad Phoenix heat was it was still better than Arkansas heat + humidity. We drove through Prescott--it was heavenly, but no work there so kept on driving.